Cognitivism and Its Theorists

Introduction
Cognitive psychology is associated with awareness, sentience (very formal), sapience (wise or learned), and the school of thought known as cognitivism. This is a theory which attempts to explain what is occurring in the mind during learning, i.e, how and why people learn, by attributing the process to cognitive activity therefore, its focus is on the mind. Essentially, this paradigm argues that the mind should be opened and understood, such like that of a “black box”, whilst the learner is viewed as an information processor (like a computer).
Many ideas and assumptions of cognitivism can be traced back to the early decades of the twentieth century. Jean Piaget (1896-1980), Lev Vygotsky(1896 – 1934), and Victor Vroom (1932- ), are some of the fundamental theorists that provided psychology with very elaborated accounts of developmental changes in cognitive abilities.

This project will introduce the above mentioned theorists scope of works, their contribution to training and development and explore how these theories are being used in modern day practices in training and development.

Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky was born in Russia in November 1896. In 1917 he graduated from the Moscow State University with a degree in Law. During his time at Moscow State, he briefly covered Psychology but in 1924 he began a more comprehensive study of the subject at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow.

Vygotsky’s career included the publishing of six books on Psychology topics over a ten years period. They were mainly focussed on child development and education, psychology of art and language development. He believed that cognitive learning and development are directly related to social interactions. His explanation was that before any child can begin cognitive development there must some form of social interaction that is, a child would learn language and identification of objects through his/her daily interface with parents, siblings and...